T O P C H E F
50 AMERICANWAY
JANUARY 15 2009
Los Angeles to Puerto Rico, the site of the
final challenges.
The three other contestants had devoted
their downtime to preparing for the big-
gest meals of their lives. Not Lofaso. She
felt as if she’d been in the middle of nurs-
ing an eight-week-old baby namedFoxtail.
Adding to the stress, contestants had to re-
linquish their cell phones. So shewas com-
pletely incommunicado fromherrestaurant
and staff. The penultimate challenge that
Lofaso and the three others faced?Butcher
a pig and use the meat as the basis for a
three-course Puerto Rican–themed meal.
One personwould be eliminated, and days
later, the remaining triowould compete for
the titleofTopChef and$100,000.
Lofaso,whowasnot completelycomfort-
able with the challenge (it didn’t jibe with
her cooking style), took a traditional route
for themeal, maybe in a bid to play it safe.
Inspired by a dinner she had attended the
night before, shedecided tokeep things ca-
sual, opting to serve all three courses on a
singleplate. “Iwantedadown-home, island
feel,” she says. “I was going for pigeon peas
with rice and sausage …
[
and
]
curry with
pork. I was aiming for a rustic feel to the
whole thing. All theseflavorswith avocado,
papaya, and mango — they go nicely to-
gether,mixedupona singleplate.”
This is the way Lofaso enjoys eating
PuertoRican food. Colicchio and the other
judgesdisagreed.Theydidn’t liketheflavors
blending. To them, it felt inelegant. Plus,
themealwashamperedby the fact thatLo-
faso’s ricedidnot come out properly, so she
had toditch it. “And the judges said thatmy
stewed peas were undercooked,” she says.
“Itwas adifferenceof fourminutes.”
Looking back, she acknowledges that
she wasn’t completely in the game, saying,
“I don’t think I was 100 percent there in
Puerto Rico. I remember wondering how
fast I could get this done so that I could go
home toFoxtail. If allmyeggs
[
hadbeen
]
in
TopChef
, it would have been different. But
Foxtailwasmybasket, and Ididn’thavemy
headwrappedaround the competition.”
The judges concurred, and Lofaso’s dish
was deemed the weakest. At the very mo-
ment she needed to rise to the challenge,
she failed— albeit, as she puts it, by four
minutes. All the more vexing to Lofaso
was that she finished one place behind
Continued on page 57
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